arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to M. Czakon.
I review the recent progress in the evaluation of two-loop massive QCD amplitudes necessary for the description of hadronic scattering processes at the LHC. I put a special emphasis on the case of top-quark final states.
We compute the virtual O(α_s^3 n_f^2) corrections to the heavy quark vector current correlator in terms of expansions in the external momentum and as an exact numerical solution. As a byproduct, the available high-energy expansion at the three-loop level is extended.
We derive the two-loop corrections to Bhabha scattering from heavy fermions using dispersion relations. The double-box contributions are expressed by three kernel functions. Convoluting the perturbative kernels with fermionic threshold functions or with hadronic data allows to determine numerical results for small electron mass m_e, combined with arbitrary values of the fermion mass m_f in the loop, $m_e^2<<s,t,m_f^2$, or with hadronic insertions. We present numerical results for m_f = m_μ, m_τ, m_{top} at typical small- and large-angle kinematics ranging from 1 GeV to 500 GeV.
We compute the virtual O(alpha_s^2) fermionic contributions to the charm quark mass dependent matrix elements of the B -> X_s gamma decay. In the case of a massless quark loop insertion into the gluon propagator, our result obtained as an expansion in z=m_c^2/m_b^2 and an exact expression in terms of multi-fold MB integrals, confirms the findings of Bieri, Greub and Steinhauser [19]. We observe, however, large deviations in the case of a b-quark loop insertion.The charm quark loop shows smaller, but still noticeable differences.
We present the two-loop virtual QCD corrections to the production of heavy quarks in gluon fusion. The results are exact in the limit when all kinematical invariants are large compared to the mass of the heavy quark up to terms suppressed by powers of the heavy-quark mass. Our derivation uses a simple relation between massless and massive QCD scattering amplitudes as well as a direct calculation of the massive amplitude at two loops. The results presented here together with those obtained previously for quark-quark scattering form important parts of the next-to-next-to-leading order QCD corrections to heavy-quark production in hadron-hadron collisions.
We present the two-loop virtual QCD corrections to the production of heavy quarks in the quark--anti-quark--annihilation channel in the limit when all kinematical invariants are large compared to the mass of the heavy quark. Our result is exact up to terms suppressed by powers of the heavy-quark mass. The derivation is based on a simple relation between massless and massive scattering amplitudes in gauge theories proposed recently by two of the authors as well as a direct calculation of the massive amplitude at two loops. The results presented here form an important part of the next-to-next-to-leading order QCD contributions to heavy-quark production in hadron-hadron collisions.
We evaluate the two-loop corrections to Bhabha scattering from fermion loops in the context of pure Quantum Electrodynamics. The differential cross section is expressed by a small number of Master Integrals with exact dependence on the fermion masses me, mf and the Mandelstam invariants s,t,u. We determine the limit of fixed scattering angle and high energy, assuming the hierarchy of scales me^2 << mf^2 << s,t,u. The numerical result is combined with the available non-fermionic contributions. As a by-product, we provide an independent check of the known electron-loop contributions.
Combining our results for various O(alpha_s^2) corrections to the weak radiative B-meson decay, we are able to present the first estimate of the branching ratio at the next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD. We find BR(B -> X_s gamma) = (3.15 +_ 0.23) x 10^-4 for E_gamma > 1.6 GeV in the B-meson rest frame. The four types of uncertainties: non-perturbative (5%), parametric (3%), higher-order (3%) and m_c-interpolation ambiguity (3%) have been added in quadrature to obtain the total error.
Recently exact results for the complete electroweak two-loop contributions to the effective weak mixing angle were published. This paper illustrates the techniques used for this computation, in particular the methods for evaluating the loop diagrams and the proper definition of Z-pole observables at next-to-next-to-leading order. Numerical results are presented in terms of simple parametrization formulae and compared in detail with a previous result of an expansion up to next-to-leading order in the top-quark mass. Finally, an estimate of the remaining theoretical uncertainties from unknown higher-order corrections is given.
Using a new result for the first moment of the hadronic production cross section at order ${\cal O}(α_s^3)$, and new data on the $J/ψ$ and $ψ'$ resonances for the charm quark, we determine the \msb masses of the charm and bottom quarks to be $\bar{m}_c(\bar{m}_c) = 1.295 \pm 0.015$ GeV and $\bar{m}_b(\bar{m}_b) = 4.205 \pm 0.058$ GeV. We assume that the continuum contribution to the sum rules is adequately described by pQCD. While we observe a large reduction of the perturbative error, the shifts induced by the theoretical input are very small. The main change in the central value of $m_c$ is related to the experimental data. On the other hand, the value of $m_b$ is not changed by our calculation to the assumed precision.
We present a new set of high precision numerical values of four-loop single-scale vacuum integrals, which we subsequently use to obtain the non-singlet corrections to the rho parameter at O(GF mt^2 as^3). Our result for Delta rho is in agreement with the recent calculation [1].
Recent applications of single-scale four-loop tadpoles are briefly reviewed. An algorithm for the evaluation of current correlators based on differential equations is described and applied to obtain high moments of the vacuum polarization function at O(alphas^2) as a preparation of O(alphas^3) calculations.
We present the complete bosonic contributions to the effective weak mixing angle, $\seff$, at the two-loop level in the electroweak interactions. We find their size to be about three times smaller than inferred from simple estimates from lower orders. In particular, for a Higgs boson mass, $M_H$, of 100 GeV they amount to $4 \times 10^{-6}$, and drop down by about an order of magnitude for $M_H = 200$ GeV. We estimate the intrinsic error of the theory prediction of $\seff$ to be $4.7 \times 10^{-5}$.
We present the values of the complete set of planar four-point Master Integrals needed for massive Bhabha scattering in the limit of fixed angle and high energy at the two-loop level. The integrals have been calculated using direct expansions of Mellin-Barnes representations, followed by a resummation of resulting harmonic series.
We confirm by explicit computation the conjectured all-orders iteration of planar maximally supersymmetric N=4 Yang-Mills theory in the nontrivial case of five-point two-loop amplitudes. We compute the required unitarity cuts of the integrand and evaluate the resulting integrals numerically using a Mellin--Barnes representation and the automated package of ref.~[1]. This confirmation of the iteration relation provides further evidence suggesting that N=4 gauge theory is solvable.
The two-loop box contributions to massive Bhabha scattering may be reduced to two-loop box master integrals (MIs) with five, six, and seven internal lines, plus vertices and self energies. The self-energy and vertex MIs may be solved analytically by the differential equations (DE) method. This is true for only few of the box masters. Here we describe some details of the analytical determination, including constant terms in ep=(4-d)/2, of the complicated topology B5l2m3 (with 5 lines, 2 of them being massive). With the DE approach, three of the four coupled masters have been solved in terms of (generalized) standard Harmonic Polylogarithms.
Details of the recent calculation of the two-loop bosonic corrections to the effective leptonic weak mixing angle are presented. In particular, the expansion in the difference of the W and Z boson masses is studied and some of the master integrals needed are given in analytic form.
I describe a package written in MATHEMATICA that automatizes typical operations performed during evaluation of Feynman graphs with Mellin-Barnes (MB) techniques. The main procedure allows to analytically continue a MB integral in a given parameter without any intervention from the user and thus to resolve the singularity structure in this parameter. The package can also perform numerical integrations at specified kinematic points, as long as the integrands have satisfactory convergence properties. I demonstrate that, at least in the case of massive graphs in the physical region, the convergence may turn out to be poor, making naive numerical integration of MB integrals unusable. I present possible solutions to this problem, but argue that full automatization in such cases may not be achievable.